Sandwiches
by Bonsoir
Summary: FE13. Virion and Sully get to know Kjelle just as she gets to know this younger, happier version of her parents. Sort of domestic family-centric fluff. For Natural Frequency for her birthday.


**Title:** Sandwiches  
**Characters:** Sully, Virion, Kjelle, with mention of Cherche, Stahl, and others.  
**Genre:** Family  
**Words:** 2,522  
**Notes:** This was done for Natural Frequency's birthday, which was May 18th. I'm late with it because I'm a terrible person. The title is because I'm feeling victorious at finally polishing this enough that it may be posted, and also because I have recently consumed a sandwich. Also sandwiches are in this story. Liberties were taken, et cetera, just a warning.

* * *

When Kjelle first appeared, she didn't need her mother's wedding band to prove that she was who she claimed to be. She had Virion's nose, after all, and Sully's stubbornly set chin. Sully immediately knew her own daughter, even though Kjelle had not yet been born in Sully's own timeline. If Kjelle's name—a feminine variation of Sully's eldest brother's name—hadn't been indication enough, so many other things gave her away. Who else could have trained her but Sully herself, her own mother? And with hair that soft and straight, who could have assisted her there but Virion?

Sully accepted her immediately, and whole-heartedly, which surprised Stahl and Miriel, because they had known Sully long enough to believe her to be quite rough around the edges, not easily accepting of anyone or anything, but her reaction did not come as such a surprise to her husband, who said, confidently though he had yet to accept Kjelle himself, "I should hope that a mother's love would conquer all, would push back the strongest of barriers, would lead to acceptance of the highest order! Surely, dear Sully would know her own daughter better than anyone, and what mother can help but open her own heart, her soul, to a child she has raised once, albeit under different circumstances? If sweet Kjelle has need of a bosom to rest against, her own mother's will do nicely, for in _this_ timeline, she is alive and able to be of some comfort to her own suffering child."

It didn't matter that Kjelle had absolutely no intention of weeping against her mother's breast. Virion's words still rang truly enough. Sully felt that Kjelle was most certainly her daughter, even though she herself had not yet felt the most basic of pregnancy symptoms, and hoped not to for a time. Not until it was safe. Though she'd fight with heavy wounds, she'd never fight while pregnant, not if she could help it. It would break her heart, she told Virion one night, as they tried to sleep.

Virion accepted Kjelle with less ease than his wife, to the surprise of Cherche, who had known him several years longer than anyone else. She confessed, a little embarrassed, to her wyvern Minerva, that she assumed—quite foolishly, perhaps—that he would accept his daughter as readily as any other woman, with compliments and smiles and an invitation to tea.

But it wasn't until Kjelle brought him food to taste that he truly accepted her, for her cuisine was even worse than her mother's. When his stomach stopped churning in agony, he smiled brighter than anyone, and the next time he saw her, he called her his precious daughter, and offered to teach her what he knew.

"Your lovely mother has never had time to learn to cook," he tried explaining to her.

"Do you get too old to learn?" she wondered aloud.

"No, my dear, no. But your mother, she hates to fail, and to fail once is a mistake, and to fail twice is unforgivable."

Kjelle bit her lip, just the way Sully always did when she was thinking very hard, and Virion found himself smiling almost tenderly. Surely—_surely_—this was their daughter! "She's afraid of failure? _My_ mother?"

"Indeed," was his reply, and he looked around to make sure that Sully was not lurking nearby, ready to smack his arm for giving away her weaknesses. It was only fair that Kjelle know of them, he felt, if she were to overcome her own fear of failure, of being bad at something. "Nobody is born without the ability to cook, but a few sorry attempts might lead one to believe that success is unattainable."

He considered telling her about the first time Cherche had come to tea, of how she'd dropped three cups in a row, and of how her face burned red with humiliation to have been so clumsy or perhaps just nervous, but he couldn't. He had promised her that he would never bring it up again. "Just look at her now!" he could have added at the end, had he been callous enough to break a promise, for she was sitting quite ladylike, drinking tea only a few yards away.

"Thank you, Father," Kjelle said, and it warmed his heart to hear her say it, for that meant they had come to accept one another.

"Now," he said with a flourish, "anyone can cook a little something! Let us start with something small and simple. Lesson number one: the sandwich!"

Even though Kjelle thought it was silly—ridiculous, even—she listened to him, and played along with his lesson, carefully assembling the pieces of a sandwich until she had something sloppy but completely edible sitting on a plate.

"I know it doesn't seem like much," he said, gently, when she stared at it for too long, "but it's a start, a step. We take them for everything. After seeing your last creation, I have come to the conclusion that you are more like your mother than I originally gave you credit for."

"And why is that? Other than our complete inability to cook?"

"It's not that you have an inability, dear, it's that both my lovely wife and daughter set such lofty goals for themselves when it comes to something new. You treat cuisine like the training you've been doing for years. Instead of starting small and working yourself up to grand recipes, you try starting with something amazing. It's not that you can't make those things, it's that you're not _ready_ to learn them, yet."

That lifted Kjelle's spirits, though she was loath to admit it. Her own mother had raised her to strive for lofty goals in training, and she always achieved them with ease, but perhaps there were some things in which starting off small was all right. It was a relief.

She left her father, then, and nibbled on her sandwich. It was edible—good, even. It wasn't fine cuisine but it was a sandwich, so it didn't have to be.

It was nice to see her parents again, even if they were almost two decades younger than she remembered them being, even if they were almost the same age, now, in this timeline.

Sully and Virion had peppered their daughter with questions about the future, and Kjelle clammed up when it came to certain things. She hated questions like, "What kind of a mother was I?" because she didn't know how to answer. Sully was an all right mother, but not everyone thought so. A great person, a wonderful warrior, but there were rumors that she had raised a soldier, not a daughter—someone to fight, not to love.

Kjelle didn't think that was true, but sometimes it was easy to doubt, like when she had trouble assimilating into groups, when she found it hard to respect anyone physically weaker than her, when she cared only about being better and stronger and about nothing else at all. She knew she ought not be ashamed of herself for wanting to stop to play with a kitten, because nobody _really_ cared, but she felt that other people would view that as a weakness. Despite the fact that it was practically the camp pet, she rarely let herself pet Olivia's dog, and even then, she would only do it if nobody was watching.

Affection was almost a secret her birthmother kept carefully hidden, probably to save herself the grief if she lost her daughter in battle, considering how often people died in the future. Her father had never begrudged her love and adoration, but sometimes it felt so empty, meaningless, rehearsed lines spewed forth to appease, words she wouldn't let herself believe because she wasn't sure if they ever meant anything, after a while.

But here, in the past, she saw her parents in a different light, like she'd never been able to see them in the future. War and sometimes famine and drought and a great many other things made their lives difficult in the future, but they were happier, here, in the past.

This younger version of her father sounded sincere when he talked, as though he meant every word he said—and he said a _lot_—instead of flattery being a long-uncontrollable habit that manifested itself into, "You look especially beautiful today, Kjelle," even when she didn't, even when he wasn't _looking_ at her, staring instead out of the window as if he might see his wife come up the walkway again someday.

For Sully had died first, in the future, and afterward Virion fought nobly to defend his people from all that came against them, but in the end, both of them lost their lives.

It was beautiful to see them together again, young and in love as they once must have been, and free to express it without the same amount of worry for their lives that had plagued them in a future that Kjelle hoped they would never experience.

* * *

When Virion came to Kjelle with an odd request—to help him gather daisies not far from camp—Kjelle thought nothing of it. Her father in the future had shown his passion before his death, his loyalty, his bravery, but this father was quietly capricious—even kind of fun. It was amazing to realize that at their hearts, they were the same person, her birthfather and this one.

She laughed to see his arms full of flowers, and took them from him, putting them in a basket so that he could pick more. "What are these for?" she asked, and he flashed her a smile.

"Your mother, of course."

"She likes daisies?"

"Yes, though at first she denied it. Your mother has struggled with being a lovely woman and a great warrior most of her adult life; it took a great amount of convincing on my part until she could admit that it was all right for her to be fierce on the battlefield and still enjoy something silly, our room in the barracks showered with blossoming flora."

Kjelle would never admit it to anyone, but she thought her father's idea was romantic. And later, when she heard her mother's voice halfway across the barracks, shouting, "Where the hell did you even _find_ this many flowers?!" with a disbelieving happy laugh at the end, she realized that maybe _that_ was something she'd also gotten from her mother: a very unique way to say "thank you" when something meant more than words could express.

* * *

Kjelle's selfish side, the side that still struggled to see equality in people of different physical strengths, was, perhaps, happy to spend time with these young versions of her parents. They were different and the same as her own, but easier to understand, easier to know.

Maybe it was their age, being only a handful of years older than she instead of twenty or more. It made her laugh to see this young father pick up her mother and swing her around for no good reason at all, only for her mother to say, "Put me down, dumbass!" sounding happy and in love. Or maybe just confident again.

Watching her friends die had shaken Sully greatly, and watching her parents die had shaken Kjelle, too, so she could understand. The failures of the younger generation meant that many had died, and like cowards, they had fled to the past to undo things for at least one future—though not their own. Theirs was doomed from the start, and Cynthia tried to assure her that there was nothing they could have done differently to tip the scales in their favor. All they could do, now, was to help this timeline, to secure at least one _good_ future.

Kjelle wondered if she would be born again, in this timeline, or if, because she still inhabited it, another child would be born instead. She thought she might like a little brother.

* * *

Sully attended the second cooking lesson between her daughter and her husband, just to watch, not to participate. She'd never managed to cook anything even half-decent, but she'd like her daughter to avoid a future of hopeless frustration over a fire. Plus, she was just damn curious about what kinds of lessons these were. Virion had bragged endlessly about the world's best sandwich, which she thought was ridiculous, but if it made him happy, she would not speak against it.

"Lesson number two," Virion said, eagerly, "is a _better_ sandwich."

Sully managed to keep from snorting in amusement, but Virion noticed the look on her face, and lifted an eyebrow.

"My dear," he said, "why don't you join us and try, too?"

Sully did laugh, at that. "What, and kill myself with my own cooking?"

But Kjelle's face stopped her flat, before she could say anything else. "Please try, Mother!" she said, looking to her father. "It's not so bad if we start small and work our way up, like future-you taught me to do with running laps! If you try to do one-hundred on your first try, you'll probably kill yourself, but starting with one or two, you can make it to one-hundred within a few months!"

Hesitantly, Sully agreed, and they spent an hour together carefully crafting sandwiches with bread that Stahl had made, and a roast cooked quite diligently by Cherche. Sully put a lot of cheese on hers, because she said she loved cheese, and Kjelle added peppers because she said she liked spicy food, and Virion smeared his with mustard and spinach greens.

Cutting each sandwich into fourths, each tried a square of the others' creation and deemed it perfectly edible, to Sully and Kjelle's delight.

"What shall we make next, Father?" Kjelle asked, quite eagerly.

Before she could stop herself, Sully cut in with, "We could try making the roast ourselves."

"And then after that," Virion said, smiling, "the bread, though we might have to ask Stahl for help on that one."

"He can teach all of us," Kjelle suggested. "Then we can all learn."

And Kjelle thought, _like a family_ at the same time that Sully and Virion felt a sharp pang of pity for the daughter they had yet to conceive, for never having the privilege of growing up with her family normal and intact, free of enjoying something as small and silly as making a sandwich to eat with her parents.

It was Virion who spoke first, quite tenderly, saying, "That's what families do—learn and grow together."

And Sully cut in between them, putting an arm around her daughter. "Since we're learning to cook together," she said, slipping in a wink to Kjelle, "I was thinking we could learn to _ride_ together, too."

"That would be wonderful, Mother!" Kjelle said. "Father, won't you join us for lessons?"

Virion could ride, but not very well, and it was with a wide smile that he agreed, saying, "Of course, of course." Turning to wink at Sully, he added, "I shall feel keen embarrassment when you best me in our lessons, but don't go easy on me."


End file.
